Greetings,
Bought a house 2 years ago and now that I have some time I wanted to upgrade the old Rain Bird system. The Rain Bird was mounted on a wall next to no outlet and is hardwired. I purchased a new Rachio 3, model 8ZULWCLITE, can i wire the Rachio 3 the exact same way as the Rain Bird?
@Spectre, the white in COM will go to any C in the Rachio 3 and the station wires in 1-5 slots go to the corresponding stations in the Rachio. The red and white wires on the left going to the 24vac will not be needed in the Rachio as it comes with a wall plug that powers the unit. Good luck.
@Spectre - Find out where the transformer to the RainBird is and replace that transformer with the Rachio transformer and splice in the brown carrier with the red and white wire into the Rachio wire so that the Rachio plug is used to power the unit. DO NOT connect RainBird 24 VAC wires (white and red) to the Rachio 24 VAC + and - terminals.
So, could you please provide a picture of the splicing / steps to visualize what you just described?
Do you have an outlet nearby?
@T33B33 -
On the Rachio Gen 3 the wire from the transformer is a round white wire with two conductors. As an example, cut the wire six inches (to give yourself some working room) from the transformer and the plug that goes into the Rachio unit. Strip back the outer cable covering and then the inner wire insulation on the two ends, splice in the wire running from the old transformer connecting the same wires on both ends (hopefully the wire from the old transformer is not the same color for both wires - although as it is AC it doesn’t matter if the wires are reversed).
Transformer ---- X splice in longer wire X-----Plug